


No End and No God

by Needled_Ink_1975



Category: NCIS
Genre: AU, F/F, Israeli character(s), Kidon Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 12:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3528647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Needled_Ink_1975/pseuds/Needled_Ink_1975
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is when I hate being here," Ziva said. "Second Lebanon, CAST LEAD: stuck here. Every time they throw fucking rockets from the Strip... stuck here."</p><p>—Ziva and Jen finally have that conversation.</p><p> <span class="small"><b>Advisory:</b> While the relationship in this story will make more sense if you read the preceding Kidon Universe stories first (listed in order <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Kidon%20Universe">here</a>), this piece can be read as a one-shot.</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	No End and No God

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a while ago, but I agreed with a certain (darling) Israeli that this story contains scraps of a much broader conversation, one that's not going to be familiar to many. Thing is, I wrote this story for that certain Israeli, and several others, and I made no attempt to educate anyone not familiar with that conversation.
> 
> There's a notes post (link at the end of the story), and it'll explain a few things, but if you want to know more, talk to Israelis. Don't just read commentary made by Westerners with no real understanding of the place and the situation. _Converse_ with the people who live there. Alternatively, as I did, you could go and live there for a couple years, but talking is *much* cheaper :)
> 
> **Please note that comments of a political bent will be deleted.**
> 
> **Disclaimer:** All recognizable characters belong to Belisarius Productions, CBS-Paramount Television, and Universal Pictures. This is a work of fanfiction for the purposes of not-for-profit entertainment, and as such constitutes fair use.
> 
> **Acknowledgments**
> 
> Thanks to **mayIreadtoday** and **La law_nerd** for their input (8 months ago!).
> 
> ...this one's for all the Israelis I know, but for one in particular, and for 3 whom I've known for 20 years.
> 
> **Per usual, concrit is very welcome and thanks in advance.**
> 
> ____________________

**No End and No God**

It had rained for three days straight, then the sun had come out with a vengeance. By eleven a.m it was ninety-five degrees, and thanks to both the rain and the Potomac River, today's relative humidity was around one-hundred percent.

"This is why I love the desert," Ziva muttered. She clutched a handful of curlier-than-usual hair and gestured with it. " _This_ , this fucking Tel-Aviv-in-America thing does not happen to my hair when I am in the desert."

"It's... very Hebrew hair today," Jen said, trying to keep her face straight.

"The usual amount of curl is sufficient."

"More than, even," Jen said lightly, the corners of her mouth twitching up.

"Oof..." Ziva grunted in annoyance. "You and your thing for curly hair..."

"I'm not permitted to have any kind of 'thing' for any...thing, not in my office," Jen said. She'd tried for serious but had failed badly, and she was smiling openly now. "It's not lunchtime, and you've no sense of humor to speak of, so I take it you're here in an official capacity?"

"Actually, no," Ziva said and parked on the edge of Jen's desk. "The big video conference did not happen, and will not happen until the latest Hamastan versus Sderot and Netivot episode ends."

"Again?" Jen said. She turned to her PC and opened a window, typed in a password, and asked MTAC for the latest intel from the IDF regarding the situation. It took only seconds for that information to arrive. "Rockets _and_ mortars... It's hotter in Netivot and Sderot than it is here... But Ziva, calling Gaza 'Hamastan' is not—"

"If you say 'not politically correct,' I will be very angry," Ziva warned. "There is nothing 'politically correct' about Qassam rockets aimed at kindergartens and schools."

"Not _diplomatically_ correct," Jen said evenly.

"Netanyahu might have coined the term, but Hamas officials like it and use it themselves. And so?"

"Fair enough, but I have to warn you that the term is frowned upon in this town."

"Right now? _Lo ichpat li_ , in the do-not-give-a-fuck sense," Ziva muttered and got up. She paced a few steps back and forth. "I always hate it that there is nothing I can do. This is when I hate being here. Second Lebanon, CAST LEAD: stuck here. Every time they throw fucking rockets from the Strip... stuck here."

"And if you were at home?" Jen asked. 'Home' was always Israel; Jen never disputed that. "Would you have something to do?"

"Gaza and the Bank are not 'home,' are they?" Ziva said quietly.

"No," Jen murmured.

Ziva inclined her head in a there-you-have-it nod, and began to pace again. For security reasons, there was no way that she could be fully informed while living in the States. The intel Jen had received had been sent to MTAC after being heavily filtered. It amounted to the barest details: an ordnance count without mention of casualties and damage, without any information regarding planned retaliatory action, or if there was any planned at all. And if Ziva was at home, she might not have an active assignment, other than analysis of available intel, but at least she'd be involved and fully informed.

"In the past, you've always hidden this," Jen noted.

"With effort, yes. I must be ordered to hide things from you now," Ziva said. She stopped pacing and shot Jen a smile. "And now you cannot order me to go home."

"But it seems to me that I should call Rob Grace and tell him to do exactly that."

"He would ask you if you are insane," Ziva drawled. "He knows me by now."

"Damn," Jen muttered.

Ziva snorted a laugh and walked around the desk. She squatted next to Jen's chair and rubbed her knee gently.

"I came here to let off steam. It worked."

"A little," Jen said knowingly.

"Any few degrees away from exploding point, is good," Ziva said and straightened up. She leaned against the edge of the desk, and folded her arms. "I end up feeling guilty, being here and not there. Even here, I make a mental note of the nearest reinforced stairwell, even though I will not need it. I do not need an ABC kit, but it feels weird not to have one... makes me feel guilty not to need one. That is silly, but I cannot help it, and that makes me more angry than I am with those fucking rocket boys in Gaza."

"That word 'silly'... I've only barely reined in a lecture," Jen admitted.

"I would probably agree with every word. Even so, I would not react well to a lecture right now," Ziva said.

"Mmm," said Jen, her smile wry. "But I'm going to issue you an order: take the rest of the day off, and spend at least some of it on the climbing wall at your health club."

"All right."

Ziva kissed Jen's forehead and left without another word said.

Jen rolled shoulders that had stiffened up over the last few minutes, and replaced her glasses on her nose. Best to get back into her work, or the rest of today would drag. As she picked up a pen, there was a soft knock at her office door. She looked up to find McGee wearing a concerned expression.

"Did something bad happen?" he asked. "I've never seen Ziva looking like that."

"Rockets and mortars from Gaza, and Ziva's dropped her mask, so to speak," Jen said. She tossed the pen on the desk. "I guess it's good that she didn't don that mask again on leaving my office, but I'm rather surprised that she let anyone else see how she's feeling."

"I noticed that expression while she was on the way downstairs. By the time she hit the squad area... Blank. Almost like what she looks like when she's on 'autopilot.'"

Jen nodded but followed that with a brief shake of her head.

"Wanna talk about it maybe?" McGee asked, his tone hesitant.

He and Jen were friends and had ended up talking about several personal issues over the last year, but those conversations had taken place away from work. Jen could be a stickler when it came to professionalism. Right now she pushed away an urge to decline McGee's offer of support.

"Talking now is better than later," Jen said. "Because later will be all Ziva's time."

"Thought so," McGee said, and gave Jen a pointed 'Go on' look.

"A strange kind of guilt," Jen said while looking at her hands. "I mean, I know not to ask anything at all if Ziva gives off that don't-wanna-talk-about-it vibe, which makes the guilt confusing. I have never once asked how she was feeling on other occasions when Hamas was lobbing ordnance at civilians; I didn't ask how she was feeling during the Second Lebanon War—"

"Because of that don't-wanna-talk vibe."

"Right, so I shouldn't feel guilty, but I do."

"Maybe some of it's because she lives here, and nowadays you're most of the reason for that?" McGee asked.

Jen nodded and looked up at McGee who'd come to stand next to her desk, hands in his pockets.

"'Home' is always Israel, and if I decide to retire early, Ziva and I will be on a plane to Tel Aviv within a month of that day, I have no doubt... Not that I'd be unwilling: I love it there."

"Even with the rockets and stuff?"

"It's strange. I was stationed there Ninety-one, Ninety-two, Ninety-three, the latter years of the First Intifada when Hamas et al were very busy blowing up buses, et cetera, but I didn't feel unsafe. I never quite picked up the Israeli siege mentality, but I very quickly fell in with the mindset of ' _Yesh ha'milchamah– nu, ma la'asot?_ ' Translate, Scholar."

"'There's a war on– so, what can you do?'" McGee said. "But I'm not that good. Ziva translated that one years back and I memorized it... Also got a hunch that she held back a lecture when I commented that the attitude seemed kinda defeatist."

"You can have the 'lecture' now, because that attitude is the opposite of 'defeatist,'" Jen said. "Despite a war, or whatever violence, as much as possible Israelis just conduct life-as-normal. Schools might close but businesses don't. Buses and trains run on time, and friends meet in bars and restaurants after work. That's only possible because they say, ' _Yesh ha'milchamah, ma la'asot?_ '"

"Well, if you attach that kind of practicality to Ziva, it's a case of, 'There's a war on back home, but I can't do anything about it, not from here.' No wonder she chose not to talk about it."

"Yes, but as she revealed just minutes ago, not being able to do anything makes her feel guilty and frustrated. And I..." Jen paused and looked at her hands again. "To be very honest, a small part of me is saying, 'Resign already.'"

"She'd... Well, she'd verbally kick your behind and tell the SECNAV to reinstate you," McGee said.

"More than likely," Jen drawled. "Anyway, I suspect that we'll end up talking about all this tonight. If not... I know better than to push her, as I said."

"She might need a little push," McGee said.

"That won't be fun," Jen muttered.

"Yeah," McGee said with a small wince. "I better get back to work."

Jen nodded and picked up the pen again. Back to work was actually a great idea. Jen very deliberately channeled every bit of her attention into paperwork and several reports.

~ ~ ~

Much later Jen walked into a house that smelled like a restaurant.

"Cooking. A lot of cooking..." Jen mumbled to herself while putting away her briefcase. Over Israeli rap she hollered, "I'm home."

"I'll change the music," Ziva hollered back.

"But I like Subliminal. It's _HaDag Nachash_ that I don't like; them, and _Shabak Samech_. They're just noise."

"Noise with a message. _HaDag Nachash_ , at least. Most of the time _Shabak S_ does not have anything useful to say."

"Frankly," Jen said and paused to kiss Ziva. "I prefer Subliminal's message to that of _HaDag Nachash_. They're far too left-of-center for my liking. Subliminal's criticism of the Israeli government and the internal condition of the country in _HaMakom HaMushlam_ is far more constructive than anything _HaDag Nachash_ has ever spouted."

"Okay..." Ziva said and started to laugh.

"What's so funny?" Jen asked and opened the fridge.

"My American lover who has informed opinions about Israeli rap," Ziva said, grinning.

"Hmph," said Jen. She capped a beer and took a swig. Regarding Ziva's cooking efforts, she said, "I take it that there's no room left in the freezer."

"No, there is still space, for all of that," Ziva said, gesturing at several containers. "And yes, I did go and climb, before I went grocery shopping and started to cook."

"Good." Jen reached out and tucked a stray tendril of hair behind Ziva's ear. "You look tired, _ahuvati_." — _my love_.

"Just... fed up," Ziva said. "I would not be feeling like this if those assholes in the Strip had decided to play _shesh-besh_ instead of throwing rockets and mortars."

"For the life of me, I can't imagine a group of men and boys arguing over which would be better: backgammon or launching ordnance."

Ziva blinked at Jen a couple of times.

"I suppose. But my point is, there is no sense in what they are doing. The rockets are ultimately just as pointless as a backgammon game, but at least when you roll the dice in _shesh-besh_ you give yourself a chance to win. Rockets? Anti-tank missiles? Mortars? Suicide bombs? Throwing stones? No-one wins. If we decide to retaliate... No-one wins. We never win; we just give them a reason to stop with the rockets."

"For a while," Jen said.

"And never for long enough," Ziva muttered while wiping down the cooking range. "And the worst part is, most of the time the rockets start because of nothing we have done. Most of the time there is a schism in one of the groups in Gaza, and someone does something stupid, like shooting at our soldiers. The soldiers return fire, because what else? Next thing, rockets get thrown by whichever little group that believes that _this_ time they will kill lots of Israeli Jews. So the other groups have an excuse, and they start throwing rockets, too... Now you know why I laugh when Western media reports about Hamas like it is organized and in control and the only bunch of fools throwing rockets."

"Oh, I've always known why you laugh," Jen said. "What was the last count?"

"Of individual terrorist groups in Gaza? Fifteen definite and distinct, with another eleven possible sub-groups. And that is not counting the list of possible schisms—plural—within each group. Hamas itself currently runs the risk of being fractured into at least four separate groups, due to leadership rivalries."

"Good God..." Jen muttered. "And you guys can't fix that."

"No, they have to fix it themselves, but so far it seems that they do not want to fix it. All we can do is try to crack down on weapons smuggling."

Ziva had been about to ball the wash-up cloth and toss it in the sink. Instead she rinsed it, wrung it out, and laid it folded on the edge of the sink. That choice and the actions following it had not gone unnoticed by Jen. Likewise, she'd noticed the tall glass of water that Ziva picked up now, and the fact that she hadn't stolen a sip of the beer in Jen's hand. There was an awful lot of control being employed in this kitchen.

"How was the climbing session?" Jen asked lightly.

"Fucked-up," Ziva growled. "I could not concentrate; I kept missing easy grip transitions. I probably looked like a fucking amateur. So... cooking, because to fuck up cooking I would have to be drunk."

"I know you avoid too much alcohol, because it depresses you," Jen said. "But have you ever been properly drunk?"

"Dead-drunk? Once, when I was eighteen, and I woke up with a guy I really did not like—"

"And once bitten, twice shy."

"More like a million times shy," Ziva muttered. "Because there were witnesses who told me that I came on to that guy."

"Which means that alcoholic excesses are a really bad idea for you," Jen said, her brows arched high.

"Yeah," Ziva said, looking at the floor. "Something that... that takes me so far beyond myself that I am not at all myself... I talked to Yuval, and he helped me to make a list of all the times when I should drink very little, but preferably not at all. On a job, if it might involve even one glass of champagne, I take a naxolone-derivative to counteract the alcohol. Away from work, if I am angry, unhappy, also when I am irritable or restless—"

"All of the above today," Jen said gently.

"And fucking homesick on top of it," Ziva whispered.

Tears spilled free and Ziva wiped them away with both hands. Jen very much wanted to close the gap between them and hug her, but she knew better: in this sort of mood, a muddle of several emotions, Ziva preferred to make the first move towards physical contact.

That was a good call on Jen's part, because Ziva did not want so little as to be touched. The feeling would ease, Ziva knew, but in the meantime it was its own issue, and something she detested. Experience had taught her not to try to override it. She wiped at tears again and folded her arms, and leaned against a counter. Keeping still was an effort, but if she began to pace that would only agitate her further. Ziva was about to ask about Jen's day, but her phone buzzed on a counter nearby. She picked it up and pressed the right button.

"David... _Shalom_ , Yossi. _Ma ha'matzav?_ " — _What's the situation?_

Jen made to leave the kitchen and give Ziva some space, but Ziva snapped her fingers softly and shook her head. Jen overheard whatever Yossi Gershom was saying as an indistinct, unintelligible hiss, and Ziva's expression was an unreadable blank.

" _Yesh nifga'im?_ " Ziva asked. _Are there casualties?_ She listened to the answer, and eventually she said in English, "No, if all we can talk about is what is already in the press, then I will keep checking the _HaAretz_ blog for updates... Yes. _Yallah_ -bye."

Ziva put her phone down and rubbed at her forehead for a while. At length, she shook her head and folded her arms again.

"' _Et ha'ma'agal l'ein sof ve'ein Elohim_ ,'" Ziva muttered. ' _A circle with no end and no God_.' She asked, "You know that poem?"

"Yehuda Amichai's _Koter haPatzatza_ ," Jen said. — _Diameter of the Bomb_. "Yes, I know it... How bad?"

"One killed, thirteen wounded, two of them critical," Ziva said briskly, as if delivering a report to a superior. "A Qassam rocket hit a car travelling between Netivot and Sderot. The driver was killed and the other two people in the car are the ones critically injured. The rest of the injuries resulted from a pile-up."

"So it was a fluke hit," Jen said.

"But they will be celebrating in Gaza anyway," Ziva growled, her blank expression gone.

"Like they always do," Jen said.

"Like always," Ziva muttered in agreement, and gestured angrily. "But I can never take that for granted, never get used to it. They have been celebrating every Israeli Jew's death since I was a child, and I... _Ani lo mevinah et zeh_." _I don't understand that_.

Ziva had been about to slam the heel of her fist down onto a counter, but she caught herself, opened her hand, and only bumped the heel of her palm on the counter a few times. She folded her arms yet again.

"You should let that out," Jen said.

"How?" Ziva snapped. "Shout? Scream? Break things? It does no good; it serves no fucking purpose. Like the rest of the country, I restrain this anger. If I do not—if _we_ do not, then Gaza and the Bank will be razed overnight. We have that firepower; we have the capability. When Westerners accuse us of 'atrocities,' they fail to recognize the amount of restraint we employ, daily. They fail to recognize the amount of fucking restraint we have employed, for _decades_. In the Nineties, after Rabin was assassinated, Israelis protested after suicide attacks, demanding that Shimon Perez should resign, demanding total goddamn war. They forgot themselves; they forgot that we are not like the fucking monsters who built and deployed those bombs. And the only reason why Gaza and the Bank are still there is because we managed—even with bombs killing little kids, we managed some- _fucking_ -how as a people to come home to truth: if we ever do what was and is done to us, then we are no better than those who have done those things to us. So there is this—" Ziva patted her chest. " _HaHavlagah_ , the Restraint. It used to be official government policy, but now it is something that lives in us, and we can live with ourselves because of it... Please, never ask me to express more than this. _More_ than this? _Retzach, rak retzach_." — _Murder, only murder_.

"You know what I call all of that?" Jen said.

"Letting it out?" Ziva guessed. When Jen nodded, Ziva said, "It is hard to speak like that, because I know that it will also do no good. Like that poem says, ' _A circle with no end and no God_.' I am never beyond that circle, and neither is the little boy in Gaza who is being taught to hate me and my people... And now you are within the boundary of that circle, too."

"It's not the first time I chose to step inside it," Jen said. "And the truth is, _ahuvati_ , I went on to another job, and left Israel behind, but I never left that circle. Because no-one can leave it, not really."

Ziva nodded, and thought about the strangers, the friends, and even those distant family members who'd chosen to leave Israel. They'd had their reasons, reasons that many a sane person would've agreed with. They wanted to raise their children elsewhere; they'd wanted, simply, to live without fear. But in their new homes Ziva knew that many of them had found new fears and concerns.

Fear was like the ultimate circumference of a single bomb: its effect was not only immediate, but also scattered outwards, between those most closely affected, on to their relatives, their friends; likewise, the reach of fear stretched to encompass the world. Ziva knew fear as something that one traded, this kind for another. She knew that fear was something that could only be beaten and kept in check by standing one's ground, and refusing to trade.

"If I counted up all the reasons I have to leave, to never go back..." Ziva trailed off and shook her head. "If we _all_ left, it would not end, and the reach of every single bomb so far would remain the same, or grow. In the end, no-one wants us. So what is left, except to hold on to what we have? And if we hold on it must be with a whole heart... When I was a kid, a silly, foolish kid, I scorned—perhaps I even hated people who left Israel. But I grew up properly when Tali's coffin was being lowered into the grave, and a man put in his handful of earth, even before the box had settled. He said, ' _Not my daughter, too. Not like this_ ,' and he walked away. And I saw him clearly then, someone whose heart was already somewhere, anywhere that we were not standing then. For him home would be anyplace except Israel. For me, and others like me, there is only Israel, and for us there is nothing to do except to hold on, and to hope, to pray, even, that one day the circle of the bomb will be just a memory."

"Beyond hope and holding on, and perhaps prayer... There has to be more than that," Jen said reasonably.

"Yeah," Ziva said. "One very important thing: Arabic taught as a compulsory subject in every Israeli school. When we have a knesset that believes that our neighbors' language is as important as water in the desert, then we will begin to make that circle smaller."

Ziva stepped closer to Jen, who was leaning against the center island. Ziva's hands were in her pockets, but she leaned in and placed a soft kiss in Jen's neck.

"I must go and check on that blog, and others. But today even I must avoid the Arabic ones. Israelis and our neighbors have to stop trying to kill each other, before we can talk... And that is another kind of circle. One of us has to stop, and then the other. We have been the first to stop, many times."

Jen's only answer was a nod, and when Ziva had left the kitchen, Jen let out a breath that had been half-held, tightly controlled for the duration of that conversation. She wasn't quite aware of taking out her laptop and opening it on the breakfast nook table. When she paid proper attention to the screen, she found a half-written resignation letter there. Jen bit at her lip and deleted the document.

If Ziva found out about that, she would likely remind Jen that sentimentality was not a wise course to sail by in a storm. And she'd be right.

Later, while Jen was staring at the contents of a very full freezer, she caught the sound of the piano lid being opened. It had a slight squeak. Jen quietly closed the freezer door and waited– a long pause. By now she could read those. Ordinarily they involved Ziva paging through sheet music until something interested her, but there was no paper-on-paper whisper tonight. Jen knew that either the lid would be closed over the keys again, or Ziva would play something she knew by heart.

The notes came at last, right-hand melody with no accompaniment, but the words to the melody were absent, though Jen knew them all too well:

 _Ein li eretz acheret_  
_Gam im admati bo'eret_  
_Rak mila be'Ivrit_  
_Choderet el orkai el nishmati._  
_Be'guf ko'ev, be'lev ra'ev—_  


_I have no other country_  
_Even when my land's aflame_  
_Just a word in Hebrew_  
_Pierces my veins and my soul._  
_With an aching body, a hungry heart—_  


The notes ceased, and the last line remained silent: _Kan hu beiti—Here is my home_. Jen bit her lip and refused to cry.

"You know, it's a good thing that you usually only play that on _Yom HaZikaron_ ," she called. — _Memorial Day_.

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

"Did you write a resignation letter?" Ziva asked.

"You know me far too well."

"There is no such thing as that, when you love someone. So did you write it?"

"I started to," Jen muttered and opened the freezer again. "Deleted it."

"Good."

Jen heard the piano lid being closed, and moments later Ziva arrived in the kitchen.

"I know I cooked a lot, but could we eat out, maybe?" Ziva asked.

"Of course," Jen said, closing the freezer again. "Call the guys and see if they've made plans?"

"I've got Tony and McGee," Ziva agreed rather eagerly, and she was already pressing buttons on her phone. "You call Gibbs?"

Jen nodded and reached for the kitchen phone. Gibbs's number was on speed dial.

"Yes, ma'am," Jen murmured while waiting for Gibbs to pick up. "Calling in backup..."

_____Ω_____

Notes post [here](http://needled-ink-1975.dreamwidth.org/247789.html#cutid1).

For something lighter and funny, try **[Tangents](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3802630)**.


End file.
